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When’s the last time you thought of yourself as a brand? If you were a car, would you be a Ford or a Mercedes? Would you be a SUV or a convertible?

When you’re job seeking, it’s strange to think of yourself as a brand or a product. It would make the most sense if all hiring decisions were based on your abilities and whether or not you could do the job.

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) – Facebook and LinkedIn want to boost dwindling numbers of women studying engineering and computer science with a collaborative initiative announced Friday that they hope will eventually fill thousands of lucrative Silicon Valley jobs long dominated by men.

Sunday night, when most of us were relaxing and watching the Golden Globe Awards, I received a text from a friend. It said, “I spent some time today figuring out a new video software.” And, it had a link to a fun short video.

When I visited Dublin, Ireland, in 2013, I was surprised at what I found. It was a European city that in some ways reminded me of home. People were incredibly friendly. The culture was built around music, food and socializing. The city’s core is a similar size to Downtown Memphis, and it’s built around a river.

Much like the old adage that we only use 10 percent of our brains, you may fall into the camp of LinkedIn users leveraging less than a tenth of what this robust business-networking platform has to offer.

December is my favorite time of year for networking. It sounds a little crazy, right? The holidays are for family and loved ones. It’s a time of gift giving, cookie baking, and sing-alongs. It’s a time to visit those you haven’t seen in over a year, and if you’re lucky, to build snowmen with your children.

Social media can be an effective marketing channel and the cost to entry – the hard cost that is – is relatively low. Consider, though, your annual salary multiplied by the number of hours you and your team spend on social media each year, and you will no doubt want to ensure that you are getting the most out of that significant time investment by avoiding these common missteps.

One of the biggest mistakes job seekers make is to stop looking for work over the holidays. Once Thanksgiving rolls around, our priorities shift. We decide companies aren’t hiring anyway, and we move on to other things. We begin to focus on putting up decorations and buying gifts.

The desire to want to change careers is a common experience. Turning that desire into reality is a different story. Navigating dramatic shifts in one’s career can be both complex and confusing. The frustration causes many people to drop the idea altogether.

Timing is everything; at least, it can be. Whether it’s in life, relationships, or job seeking, timing can strongly influence the outcome of a situation.

When you’re searching for a new career, there are many things you should do, such as update your resume and cover letter. You want to keep your LinkedIn profile current, and have a nice suit on hand for interviews. You should spend time growing your network and applying for jobs.

This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mike Steinerd from Indeed.com. Indeed is the No. 1 job site worldwide with over 140 million visitors per month. We talked about everything from how fast you should apply for a job to companies you should consider if you’re looking for work-life balance.

When it comes to job seeking, sometimes less is more. Everything we do – from the clothes we wear to our resumes to our social media accounts – says something about us. These things are pieces of our personal brands.

Cold calling is a tough business, though a necessity for many companies. The cost of sales is high, as is sales rep rejection and fatigue. Imagine if email could significantly improve your engagement rate with otherwise cold prospects. If executed well, it can, explains Scott Britton with life-longlearner.com, the forensic accountant of the email world whose company was acquired by Constant Contact for $100 million in 2012.

Much of the research about employment suggests older workers are waiting longer to retire. This means many seasoned professionals are also still job searching. And, many of those are struggling to find their way.

One of the best ways to advance a career in a competitive market is through networking. In many ways, it’s both the easiest and hardest part of a search. Today, I received two questions on the topic of networking best practices.

One of the most cost-effective strategies for driving Web traffic and generating online leads is email marketing. Unfortunately, most small and mid-sized companies have an email database filled mostly of current clients, business partners and other friends of the firm. To put a fire under your email marketing and dramatically boost results, follow these five steps for growing your email database.

Career transitions are all the rage these days. Whether it’s moving between jobs more frequently or updating your skill set midstream, change is happening. One trend growing in popularity is employees who are making a move between the nonprofit and corporate worlds.

NEW YORK (AP) – Target, Nordstrom and other big chains are pinning their hopes of attracting shoppers on social media.

Retailers increasingly are using Pinterest, a social media site that allows users to create collections of photos, articles, recipes, videos and other images that are called "pins," to draw business to their own sites.

When you’re working to turn over a new leaf in your career, you start with the basics: an updated resume, a catchy cover letter, new business cards and a fresh LinkedIn profile. These pieces are requirements of your search, but they’re not where the important work happens. The foundation of a long-term career is built on networking.

When new jobseekers start their search for the perfect opportunity, they’re often met with one of two concerns. Either “I’m too old” or “I’m too young.” Those who are older feel their experience will be overlooked because they have too many gray hairs. Those who are young feel their lack of experience will trump their abilities.

I’ve heard the same story at least three times in the past two weeks. A high-performing worker went in for a performance review with the boss. The boss said something along the lines of, “You’ve done a great job. I appreciate you. I can’t offer you a promotion, or a raise, but please don’t leave. I need you here.”

Some people seem to have all the luck. From the outside, they appear to get every promotion, make more money, drive a nicer car and live in a nicer house. It’s like they are surrounded by a ray of sunshine all day. This seems especially true of celebrities, company heads and professional athletes. How do they get so lucky, and when will my luck change?

As college graduates prepare to enter the working world in May, corporations begin to ramp up their hiring. More jobs are posted, and recruiters increase their search efforts. Even if you graduated from college years or decades ago, this can be a perfect time to look for a new opportunity.

For the past couple of years, more and more businesses have been communicating with their audiences through Instagram.

By definition, Instagram is an online photo-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them and share them on a variety of social networking services. I applaud the creators of Instagram for taking everyone’s favorite social media feature – photos – and using it as the core of the platform.

Last week, as I pulled toward my parking space at home, the adorable 3-year-old boy who lives next door ran up to my car. “I haven’t seen you in a while!” he exclaimed in the most excited voice I’d heard all week. “How have you been?” I rolled down my window and chatted with him until his grandmother quickly rushed over to sweep him up.

A new business group for professional women and business owners has launched in Memphis and is meeting at Napa Cafe next week to hear a veteran sales strategy consultant talk about authenticity in the digital world.

For many employees in the Memphis area, the story is all too familiar. You wake up one day and go to work, just like it was any other. You wear the same clothes, drive the same route, and eat at the same place for lunch. Things seem fine at first, but something starts to feel a little out of whack.

These days, the way in which you present yourself has become more complicated. It’s no longer just about being well groomed with a firm handshake. Your Facebook page, LinkedIn account, email address, business cards and phone number all say something about you. They are all pieces of your personal brand.

January is the perfect time to begin working on your 2014 plan. As you prioritize your New Year’s resolutions, consider a career cleanup along with your plans to go to the gym more often. If you’ve been thinking of a career change, whether it’s an internal promotion or moving to a new company or field altogether, this is the perfect time.

Now’s the time to get started on your resolution to find a new job in the new year. The holidays are the perfect time to begin your search. Yes, many HR departments are on vacation and hiring appears to halt. But, it’s a great time for you to lay the foundation to stand out in 2014.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Silicon Valley is escalating pressure on President Barack Obama to curb the U.S. government surveillance programs that vacuum personal information off the Internet and threaten the technology industry's financial livelihood.

Part two of a two-part series. With more than 200 major, active social media networks cited by Wikipedia, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all of the choices available. Given the considerable amount of time that businesses are investing in social media marketing, it’s vital to focus those efforts on the right networks versus every network.

Part one of a two-part series. For the majority of industries, social media is an essential arrow in a company’s quiver of marketing tools.In fact, more than half of businesses using social media marketing for more than three years report an increase in sales over that period, according to the 2012 Social Media Industry Report.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Twitter, a privately held company built on blurbs, has finally laid itself bare in documents that read more like a treatise than a tweet.

The roughly 800-page filing Twitter Inc. released late Thursday on its way to an eagerly anticipated IPO contains tantalizing tidbits about its growth and its attempts to make money from its influential short messaging service.

Ray’s Take In the “good old days,” many individuals felt comfortable with a lifetime employment approach to their careers. Perhaps they might not become wealthy, but they felt their jobs and pensions were secure. They would then blithely go about their tasks without paying attention to what else was going on in their company. The world is very different now, and it is now essential to regularly scan the health of your career, the company you work for and its competitors.

Many business professionals think of networking as mainly attending events and exchanging business cards. Then you go back to your office and connect on LinkedIn or some similar networking service and wait for the magic to happen. And it rarely does.

The National Association of Women Business Owners, Memphis chapter will meet Tuesday, June 11, at 11:15 a.m. at Chickasaw Country Club, 3395 Galloway Ave. Shelley Baur, owner of One Source Associates, will speak, and the 2013-2014 officers and board will be installed. Tickets in advance are $25 for members and $30 for nonmembers; tickets at the door are $35. Visit nawbomemphis.org.

The Daily News will present Literatini, benefiting Literacy Mid-South, Thursday, June 13, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at The Booksellers at Laurelwood, 387 Perkins Road Extended. The event will include martinis and food, an auction, live music and a wine pull. Tickets are $50 per person or $75 per couple. Visit literacymidsouth.org.

Catherine “Kitty” Keller is one of the newest members of the team at RedRover Sales & Marketing, and her addition comes at a time of a steady swelling of the ranks, a recent batch of awards and consistent business growth for the firm.

Who is more important: you or a group of your fellow nonprofit volunteers or professionals? What signal are you sending when you direct your attention to your mobile device instead of the group’s discussion? If you believe the work of the organization or institution is unimportant, say so and work with your peers to restructure meetings. If not, give your attention to the business at hand. Each of you has carved out time from your busy schedules to attend the meeting: make the most of it.

As an adjunct accounting professor at the University of Memphis, I am constantly trying to prepare my students for their future. Part of that preparation is exposing the students to tools that will assist them in their search for employment.

Rhodes College will host Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, presenting “A New Vision of Islam in America,” as part of its free Communities in Conversation Series Monday, Feb. 25, at 7 p.m. in the McCallum Ballroom of the Bryan Campus Life Center on campus, 2000 North Parkway. Visit rhodes.edu.

Make it your resolution to execute these Top 10 smart marketing trends in 2013.

1. Visual Storytelling – Thanks to image-centric sites like Pinterest and Instagram, 2012 became the year of brand visualization. Visual content is now in higher demand than ever before and brands must step up and tell their story through more than words.

It has been 12 years since Shelby County voters have encountered a Democratic or Republican presidential nominee on the general election ballot who had some kind of political presence in the region, if not the city, before they made their bid for president.

A small-business-themed workshop tour presented in part by the New York Stock Exchange is stopping in Memphis next week.

The NYSE, small-business lender Accion and Yelp, which operates a business ratings and review website and app, earlier this summer joined forces to launch their “Small Business Connections Tour,” part of the organizations’ NYSE Big StartUp initiative.

Part two of a two-part series Virtual scrapbooking site Pinterest has quickly taken the world of social media by storm, leaving some business owners and marketers scratching their heads about how exactly to leverage their time investment accordingly.

You just said yes to fundraising for an organization you believe in. It could be your child’s school, your alma mater, a local hospital or an advocacy organization. You felt confident you could help when you took on the task, but now, upon reflection, you wonder what you have gotten yourself into.

In LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s recent book “The Startup of You,” he recalls a billboard in Silicon Valley that asks passers-by – many of them presumably being startup founders – a simply question: What makes you so special?

WASHINGTON (AP) – Hackers broke into computers at hotel giant Wyndham Worldwide Corp. three times in two years and stole credit card information belonging to hundreds of thousands of customers. Wyndham didn't report the break-in in corporate filings even though the Securities and Exchange Commission wants companies to inform investors of cybercrimes.

To Liz Jostes, a social media and small-business consultant, now is a great time to be a small-business owner.

Between search engine optimization, social media and other tech tools available today that weren’t around or weren’t as robust a few years ago, “the little guy” can compete on a wider playing field than ever before.

Commercial real estate firm Investec Realty Services has broadened its reach beyond the Memphis market thanks to a partnership with the international network of Sperry Van Ness.

A recent franchise affiliation increases the company’s footprint from 10 brokers in Tennessee to more than 700 affiliates in 145 markets, plus another 35,000 brokers who subscribe to the Sperry Van Ness network.

At Obsidian Public Relations in Downtown Memphis, it’s not unusual to find employees on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites as they handle their clients’ PR needs throughout the day.

NEW YORK (AP) – Facebook made a much-anticipated status update Wednesday: The Internet social network is going public eight years after its computer-hacking CEO Mark Zuckerberg started the service at Harvard University.

NEW YORK (AP) – Google, Facebook and other big tech companies are jointly designing a system for combating email scams known as phishing.

Such scams try to trick people into giving away passwords and other personal information by sending emails that look as if they come from a legitimate bank, retailer or other business. When Bank of America customers see emails that appear to come from the bank, they might click on a link that takes them to a fake site mimicking the real Bank of America's. There, they might enter personal details, which scam artists can capture and use for fraud.

NEW YORK (AP) – Europe took the financial world on a stomach-churning ride in 2011.

The rising threat of default by heavily indebted European countries spread fear across financial markets and weighed on economies worldwide. As the year came to a close, banks and investors nervously watched Europe's political and financial leaders scramble to prevent the 17-nation eurozone from breaking apart.

NEW YORK (AP) – Facebook might finally be laying down the groundwork for a highly anticipated initial public offering, long expected to take place sometime after April 2012.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the world's largest online social network is looking to raise as much as $10 billion in its IPO. The Journal cited people familiar with the matter but did not identify them by name.

NEW YORK (AP) – Groupon, the company that pioneered online group discounts, saw its stock climb by nearly a third in its public debut Friday, showing strong demand for an Internet company whose business model is considered unsustainable by some analysts.

NEW YORK (AP) — Two companies with quirky names, Ubiquiti Networks and Zeltiq Aesthetics, made their public debuts earlier this month with listings on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Each company's stock went up modestly on the first day of trading.

NEW YORK (AP) – Only a few months ago, Groupon was the Internet's next great thing. Business media christened it the fastest growing company ever. Copycats proliferated. And investors salivated over the prospect of Groupon going public.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) – President Barack Obama on Monday defended his push to tax the rich more to help jolt the economy and rebuild it for the long term, saying the income of well-to-do people has soared while the middle has struggled with no room to spare.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) – The debate over how to create jobs has moved to Silicon Valley, where the president and Republican leaders were each taking to the Internet to trumpet their agendas and win over young voters.

More and more companies are tapping into social networking sites during the recruitment process, giving job board sites a run for their money.

While sites like CareerBuilder and Monster cost money for employers to search through resumes, social media like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are free. And with the number of users growing by the minute, recruiters like Cheryl Citrone and Dianne Tabulog with Vaco Memphis are capitalizing on the high volume of traffic and mutual connections.

The largest commercial and industrial construction association in West Tennessee is leveraging its size, resources and expertise to provide reliable and timely construction-related information to its members and the community.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Zynga, the online game maker behind "FarmVille" and other popular Facebook pastimes, is going public, the latest in a crop of high-valued Internet IPOs expected after LinkedIn Corp. showed that the online networking craze is a hot commodity on Wall Street.

Before the advent of email and texting, we didn’t take many shortcuts in our written communication. Now, our finesse with messages depends on the size of our thumbs, the amount of time we have between flights and how much our viewers’ screens (or brains) will comfortably hold. What suffers is the refinement of our compositions.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two-part series. It’s official. Twitter is not a passing fad. Eight out of 10 people know about it, and in five years, Twitter has amassed more than 100 million users.

For most industries, sales is still a relationship business. It’s about who you know and how you make them feel. Social media tool, LinkedIn, has created efficiencies around both. It enables you to make a first connection with a much larger group of prospects than you normally would through traditional offline networking. Mind you, it doesn’t replace quality face-to-face interaction, but it facilitates it.

Now that Morgan Stanley has allowed itself to be the first major wealth manager to use social media for marketing purposes, Memphis marketing professional Amy Howell is encouraging other financial services companies to follow Morgan Stanley’s lead.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Internet radio station Pandora Media's IPO struck the right chord with investors Wednesday despite the static in the overall stock market.

Pandora's shares surged by as much 63 percent in their market debut before pulling back later in the session. The stock closed at $17.42, still a decent gain amid the market's broader decline. It marked a 9 percent increase from Pandora's initial public offering price of $16 and a nearly six-fold increase from what Pandora's own board thought the stock was worth just six months ago.

NEW YORK (AP) – Facebook, it turns out, isn't just a waste of time. People who use it have more close friends, get more social support and report being more politically engaged than those who don't, according to a new national study on Americans and social networks.

NEW YORK (AP) – Pandora raised the price range of its initial public offering Friday by at least a third and boosted the number of shares to be sold by as many as a million, demonstrating again a seemingly insatiable demand from investors for a stake a new slate of Internet companies.

The world of social media is a trending topic these days, but its presence locally is still relatively unknown.

That’s why Obsidian Public Relations and Research Dynamics Inc. partnered to conduct a public opinion survey in hopes of learning more about the types of social media being used in the Memphis area and the implications of those habits for businesses and nonprofits alike.